One Last Note on the Libertarian Debate

 Did anyone notice that no one actually answered the first question posed by the moderator during Saturday evening's Libertarian Party presidential debate? When Jim Pinkerton asked which philosopher's ideas most resembled his own, Bob Barr replied that he was most fond of and influenced by Ayn Rand, not that his ideas are similar to hers. Each subsequent candidate made similar statements about a philosopher they discovered or found to be influential when the question reached them. In other words, while such answers could be interpreted as roundabout ways of saying such-and-such a person's ideas are like mine, they are not, in fact, answering the question.

Wouldn't it have been nice, too, had the candidates not stuck to the predictable Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman references and mentioned less blatantly objectivist or libertarian folks? Seriously, how great would it have been to hear "Arthur Shopenhauer is most like me" or "I feel like Albert Camus's conception of the absurd is pretty consistent with my own life philosophy"?